MILWAUKEE — A holistic partnership in health care to get resources to our community’s most vulnerable.
A new partnership between Froedtert and the Medical College of Wisconsin, Advocate Aurora Healthcare, Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin, Sixteenth Street Community Center, Impact Inc. and Technology Platform NowPow hopes to help.
The collaborative effort is called Impact Connect. Anytime you see a doctor at one of these facilities, you will be offered this voluntary questionnaire. Impact CEO John Hyatt adds, “You will get that screen when you go in for your regular annual checkup.”
Anyone who answers "yes" will be shown resources to help them. Hyatt says that data is then collected and looped into the IMPACT 2-1-1 database, “That agency can close that loop and say yep she made it and she was eligible for services and she got the services.”
Based on the answers that are gathered with the patient's consent, the data can also narrow down the need by neighborhoods. Hyatt adds, “And are those services in the zip code in the neighborhood, and are they accessible.”
In the past year at Sixteenth Street Community Center, 3,500 patients voluntarily answered the list of eight questions. The questions include if you can pay your rent and utilities on time, as well as your mental health.
Rosamaria Martinez with Sixteenth Street Community Center shares the biggest outcome, “Of the patients we’ve been screening about 20 percent of the patients indicate they are afraid of losing their housing.”
The good part is that all of them were shown a number of resources to get help immediately. Helping every family find solutions and flourish is what this effort is all about.
The hope is to expand Impact Connect to schools and within the Department of Corrections.
If you need help you can call 211 24/7. Based on your needs, the organization can connect you with more than 10,000 resources in their system.